| Maple Street Community Garden | |
| Type: | Community garden |
Maple Street Community Garden is a community garden in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. It is located on Maple Street between Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard and Nostrand Avenue.
Maple Street Community Garden was founded on a vacant lot which formerly had an abandoned house that burned down in 1999. The garden was started by the Maple Street Block Association in 2012 with a $1,000 grant and later $4,800 from the City Council to clean the vacant lot. The lot was privately owned but the gardeners were unable to establish contact with the owners.[1]
In September 2014, a limited liability company (LLC) owned by the Makhani brothers claimed to own the lot and tried to evict the gardeners. The LLC furnished a deed which claimed it to have purchased the home from heirs of the original owners. It was later discovered that the brothers had a shady real estate business. In July 2015, the gardeners were briefly barred from the site when the LLC acquired a restraining order.[2] On November 6, 2015, the Brooklyn Supreme Court dismissed the ownership claim of the LLC and ordered an independent legal guardian to find the heirs of the property.[3] In 2016, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and neighborhood Councilman Mathieu Eugene set aside a budget for 2017 to acquire the property for $1.25 million and transfer it to the Parks Department.[4] In 2017, the City Planning Commission approved the acquisition after going through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).[5] [6]
In 2021, the garden launched its Fresh Food Box Program with GrowNYC. The garden plots are all gardened communally by members and any neighbor can help on harvest days.[7]